Tuesday, May 22, 2012

All These Lives Blog Tour: Jena

Sarah Wylie's (seriously amazing) debut All These Lives is set to hit shelves June 5, so to celebrate the upcoming release, Sarah's stopping by various blogs to talk about 9 Things to Love About All These Lives.

Today, we're focusing on Thing #1: Jena and I've got an interview for you guys with the girl of the hour!

For those of you that missed my review last week, here's the book summary, so you have an idea of who Jena is:

Sixteen-year-old Dani
is convinced she has nine lives. As a child she twice walked away from
situations where she should have died. But Dani’s twin, Jena, isn’t so
lucky. She has cancer and might not even be able to keep her one
life. Dani’s father is in denial. Her mother is trying to hold it
together and prove everything’s normal. And Jena is wasting away. To
cope, Dani sets out to rid herself of all her extra lives. Maybe
they’ll be released into the universe and someone who wants to live more
than she does will get one. Someone like Jena. But just when Dani
finds herself at the breaking point, she’s faced with a startling
realization. Maybe she doesn’t have nine lives after all. Maybe she
really only ever had one.

Your relationship with your sister, Dani, has been a little strained lately. How would you best describe your sisterly bond?

Um. We don’t like many of the same things, and we don’t always get along, but I would harness all my soccer skills to kick the butt of anyone who messed with her. I think she’d do the same for me.

If you could tell Dani one thing that would stick with her forever, what would it be?

She’d hate me for saying this – hate me – but I guess I would say that even now, even after every thing that’s happened, I’m still glad it was me and not her.

Dani thinks she's been sneaky with many of her attempts at self destruction, but is she really fooling you?

No. I mean, I don’t always know what she’s doing, but I have no doubt she’s up to something.

What is your favorite childhood memory with your sister?

This one time I had the chickenpox and my mom wouldn’t let Dani anywhere near me because she’d never had it. I don’t know how Dani managed it (my mom is known for her hawk-like watching skills), but she snuck into my room. We giggled and talked and “hid” from Mom for what felt like hours. It wasn’t, like, the best moment of my childhood or anything but it had felt like years since I’d seen my sister. The best moment of my childhood might have been Mom’s freak-out when she found Dani.

Which guy is more your type: Jack or Spencer?

What’s the least offensive way to put this? Dani and I have totally different tastes in guys. (It is better that way, trust me.) I mean, Jack is an obsessive rule-follower, he’s awkward and shy; Spencer is an obsessive rule-breaker, overconfident and cocky. How about a nice, normal, issue-free dude somewhere in the middle? The only requirements: He would sit with me and listen to the New York Dolls for hours on repeat. He wouldn’t ask about my hair. He’d know that my go-to drink is a mocha, and Dani’s is anything with caramel. And he’d hate Liverpool on principle, even if he didn’t know anything about soccer.

What's the thing you miss most about going to school?

I miss the mind-numbing normalcy of it all. Before I was sick, we were all a bit zombie-like: my dad working nonstop, Mom managing Dani’s, er, career, Dani and I just doing regular stuff like homework and soccer and auditions and hanging out at the mall. Calling it zombie-like makes it sound like a bad thing, but it wasn’t. Now, it feels like we’re holding our breaths, waiting for something, anything, to happen. I miss crappy cafeteria food, too, and my friends. I haven’t spoken to them in forever.

To celebrate the book's release, Sarah has an awesome prize pack lined up that you can enter here to win! It includes a signed copy of All These Lives, 3 All These Lives Bookmarks, and three pre-orders of any Apocalypsies' books.